I've been looking for ways to un-tether from my iPhone, and one of the first things I wanted to eliminate was keeping it by the bed. I have a terrible habit of checking it just before I go to sleep, and I think it negatively affects my quality of rest. The problem is that I use it as an alarm. So I thought I would just replace it with that old-fashioned contraption, the alarm clock.

I went to Target, Best Buy, Costco, Home Goods, and I couldn't believe the ugliness of the average alarm clock. Too many look straight out of the 1980's with cheap black plastic and blazing red digital numbers. But I did some clicking around and with the help of the HH facebook page, came up with some decent options to keep by your bed instead of your phone.

(Note: before you purchase any of these online, make sure you check reviews and dimensions. Some of these are smaller than the photo leads you to believe. This can be a good or bad thing, I just want you to be aware.)

Who could have predicted that finding a good looking alarm clock would be difficult? This is what technology has brought us, I suppose, less value on things that serve a single function. I think I'm going to try out two of these (leaving one for the guest room), so I'll report back if one is wildly better than the other.

*Some affiliate links were used in this post. This means that if you click through and make a purchase, it supports this site at no additional cost to you. Thanks for using HH links to shop your favorite online stores.

I'll write an introductory post about it soon, but the next book in the Read Great Books literature challenge will be Charlotte Bronte's JANE EYRE. You can RSVP here for the group discussion we'll have about it on Monday, April 27. These chats are so fun and make reading the classics even better.

There are lots of posts similar to this one, but I still like to read them. They serve as little reminders. Sometimes you have to hear a message over and over again for it to stick. Busy is a sickness.

This weekend I'm hosting my sister-in-law and her sister while they run an impressive race here in LA, then on Sunday I'm hosting the Radical Forgiveness brunch. It's sunny and I'm home for the first weekend in a month and those things make me happy.

Of all the sites we visited and experts we heard from in Israel, meeting the women of the Parents Circle was one of the most moving.

The Parents Circle is a joint Israeli & Palestinian organization made up of over 600 families who have lost an immediate family member in the conflict. We talked and made jam with some of these women, mostly grieving mothers, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, all who spoke of how the Parents Circle had given their sadness a purpose as they worked towards peace-building.

These stories are hard to hear. Some of these deaths came from snipers or mistakes. The women didn't all agree on political issues or national narratives. But their collective loss made them long for peace.

Our group was able to meet them in a neutral space, as the military checkpoints can make meetings like this nearly impossible. We used a translator if needed, but once we were all in the kitchen, the language was universal. We cooked and joked, and even celebrated a birthday. With a war happening just steps away, it was an afternoon like none of us had experienced.

We met Robi Damelin, an Israeli who lost her son David to a Palestinian sniper. She spoke to us specifically about women's role in the conflict, how what they're teaching in their home informs the next generation.

"Women are the ultimate victims of war. No one asks us if we should go to war, if we should sign the cease fire, or if we should perhaps go for peace." - Robi Damelin

The brunch is an open invitation, if you're local I would love for you to join us. These issues are complicated, I'm still learning from so many sources. This brunch is just a conversation. A side of it perhaps you haven't seen. RSVP to the event here, and make sure and let me know you're coming.

I’ve been skiing my whole life, more or less. I could take it or leave it.

When I was little, my family was the one in line when the lift opened at 9am, and strategically managed our time so that we caught the last ride up at 3:55pm before the lifts closed. I thought I was a really good skier because my parents told me I was. But then I went on a spring break trip in college with my boyfriend and some friends, and after bragging about my downhill skills I crashed in such an openly fantastic way on the first run that my ego and my ankles limped through the rest of the week. Since then I’ve never again claimed to be a good skier, though I do like to go fast.

It took me until I was 30 years old to rebel against the rigid family schedule. My husband - a longtime snowboarder - and I prefer to have a lazy morning and wander out to the slopes once the sun is high. If we get too cold, we stop for hot chocolate or come in altogether. My family used to judge that kind of lazy, passive approach to a ski vacation, but as the years have gone on and we’ve all added babies to the mix, The Gorilla and I are often not the only ones puttering around with our coffee until mid-morning.

For the last five or six years, we’ve rented the same house on the side of the mountain, large enough to hold my parents, my siblings, all our kids and a guest or two. If the conditions are right, we can ski in and out directly from the house. Otherwise we take turns driving groups down to drop off the kids at ski school or the closest lift. We eat burgers and nachos on the mountain for lunch, and rotate making big dinners at the house, serving the 9 grandkids first at the kitchen island, the adults eating later on real plates instead of paper.

Every year I good-naturedly complain about this family vacation, even though it’s my brother and his wife who do the lion’s share of the work to make it happen. It’s a major big time pain to get almost twenty people into and out of ski gear every day, to cook for the group, to get us all there from Oklahoma and California. Every single year my sister and I ride the lift up and laugh until we’re almost crying about the whole shebang.

We’ve made it easier on ourselves over the years. The schedule has relaxed, the transportation has changed. Last year, for the first time in TWO DECADES, we got babysitters and ate dinner at a restaurant. We have a tradition of watching Oscar-nominated movies at night after supper, when we’re achy and sunburned. Depending on the time of year, we also usually end up cheering at some sporting event on the tv. Those memories are as strong as the ones on skies.

Growing up doing this Colorado trip, I thought it was all about the sport. I worked on keeping my skies parallel and was taught not to complain about the weather or the exertion. As an adult, I’m now allowed to say that I feel pretty ambivalent about the activity itself, but I can also see that the week isn’t really about skiing. It’s about watching the cousins make a snowman and use a hot dog for the nose. It’s about seeing the foxes run through the backyard in the early mornings, and the most introverted of the kids excel at something physical and be proud of it.

We all meet up for chocolate waffles at the base, and take turns picking up kids from ski school and buying tickets for the bungee jump after the lifts close. We pass around pocket tubes of sunscreen and it’s all hands on deck when getting little feet into big boots. My mom always makes a warm snack to greet us when we come in. This is our family and it is our life.

The trip to Israel was over a year in the making, but as our departure date approached, I became terrified. Lately I’ve been more scared to travel than usual, annoying since our family is on the move so often. It started with the disappearance of Malaysia Air flight 370, but other factors have led to me feeling jumpy about being away from my family, truthfully wanting us all to stay together in our house and never leave. But that’s not reality and going to the Holy Land was important to me, so I (barely) swallowed the fear and packed my bags.

There was a second reason I felt so much trepidation before leaving for Israel. My faith has been shifting and changing in the last several years, first at a snail’s pace and then rapidly. I have wrestled mightily with the Christianity of my youth, abandoning much of it altogether. It’s been difficult to separate the spirit of the Bible from those things that are cultural, Christ from Christians, so it’s like I’ve started over. I’m a spiritual baby. It felt like a betrayal, then, to sight-see in the land of Jesus.

The point of our trip wasn’t pure pleasure. There were twenty-five of us, mostly writers and bloggers, there to learn more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So in addition to visiting the traditional sites, every day we met with a number of local thought leaders all along the political and religious spectrum. We talked with orthodox Jews that resided in the Old City, we crossed into Palestine and met with people who resided in the refugee camps. We heard from professors on the history of modern Israel and from Jerusalem experts on the various proposed peace solutions. Most of this information was entirely new to me, and it stretched the brain to the point of exhaustion, hearing from various points of view, each a version of truth.

I came away from these stories even more confused than before I started, but our trip leaders had warned us this would be the case.

In-between our education, we stopped at the church marked as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and the tomb from which he rose, we entered Bethlehem to see the manger where he was born (much more like a rock cave than the barn you might picture), the Mount of Olives and the Sea of Galilee. Some of these places were touristy to the point of being annoying, on the surface it feels like a violation to turn these holy sites into souvenir shops.

But looking just one inch beneath that surface, to see the thousands of people a day who pilgrimage there to worship, to hear the dozens of languages spoken in one small space in pursuit of a God who became man, it was humbling to me as I struggle with my doubts. I am not smarter or more enlightened than they. There is still something there for me, even if I haven’t exactly found it yet.

...

I grew up in a one-stoplight Oklahoma town before I fell into a life in Los Angeles. I met my unexpected husband on a movie set, and spent years working in reality television until we married and started our family. So now I am a housewife and we live in Hollywood.

That cliche doesn't mean what it used to. The women in my life can discuss politics and lipstick in the same breath. Amen.

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